


Radio #1

by zjofierose



Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, PWP
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-04
Updated: 2013-07-04
Packaged: 2017-12-17 17:03:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/869904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zjofierose/pseuds/zjofierose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s something about this kid, and Zach just can’t shake it. It’s like… it’s like he doesn’t believe in personal space. Yes, the station is small. Yes, the rooms are tiny, and crammed with stack upon stack of various electronics, running the gamut from cutting edge to decades obsolete. But still, Zach thinks when he turns around and whacks his elbow into Chris’ middle for the third time that evening, this is just not right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Radio #1

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt: AU - Some kind of mentor/mentee relationship with Zach as the mentor...could be like teacher/student, boss/intern, some kind of military instructor/cadet thing, or whatever else you can think of that's similar...adult/teen is okay.

“So, ok. This is the soundboard, here. No, don’t _touch!_ ” Zach just barely resists actually slapping the fingers that are inching toward the leftmost dial on the console before they get snatched back. 

The kid has a vaguely guilty expression on his stupid face, but Zach glares at him anyway, just to make sure he gets it. 

“Never touch _anything_ on the board without my permission. If you fuck something up, thousands of people will hear.” There it is, the satisfying blanch that always comes as soon as the new kids figure out that in spite of appearances, you’re never truly alone when you’re on air. The guy looks suitably chastened, so Zach turns his back on him and continues with his explanation.

“Ok, so, that screen on the left, that’s the AP wire. Stories come in on the wire on a continuous feed, and that’s where you’ll get all your news for your breaks. You can sort it by area or topic like this” he toggles the F7 key, popping up a category menu, then hits escape, “or just by scrolling with the mouse.” He clicks again and the menu refreshes. “Your weather alerts will come through here too, so make sure you’re always checking it every few minutes to see if there’s anything new.” 

The kid nods again, his hands clasped behind his back, and Zach looks him up and down. He’s fairly built, but kind of boring. The generic corn-fed looking jock in his uniform of white tee, plaid overshirt, and battered jeans. Just like every other frat boy wanna-be on campus. At least he’s got the sense not to act like he already knows it all, like the last intern did. That’s refreshing. Maybe he’ll last more than a week.

“This screen over here on the right, this is our programming computer. It’s on a 24 hr feed, and it’s really the brains of the operation. I’ll be teaching you to use it later, but in the meantime, just… keep your fingers off, ok?”

He catches the guy’s eye, and there’s a glint of something there, something smart, before the guy nods passively and looks away, scuffing his shoe against the carpet.

“Don’t scuff” Zach scolds without thinking. “You’ll work up a charge. It’s bad enough in the spring and fall, but in the winter, with the soundproofing foam and the carpet you can shock the motherfucking hell out of yourself. Break the habit now, you’ll thank me later.”

The guy nods again, shoving his hands in his pockets, and Zach turns away. This kid is dull as dirt. He has no idea how he’s going to spend the next two and a half hours training him. He turns, walks out the door of the control room without looking to see if the guy even follows.

This has the potential to be excruciating.

\--

Two more evening shifts, and the guy is finally starting to cotton on to a few things. He remembered how to reset the NWS alarm all by himself when the ear-splitting beep went off, and he’s erased all of the overnight carts on the magnetic block without accidentally erasing anything important. 

He still looks like a moron, his supply of plaid flannel apparently as unending as his drawer of plain white shirts, but Zach had caught a glimpse of something that looked suspiciously like a dog-eared Ferlinghetti when the guy had thrown his canvas satchel down on the conference room couch.

Maybe he wasn’t a complete waste of air. 

“So, it’s a half hour before the last break of the night.” Zach folds his arms and leans back in the console chair. “What do we have left to do?”

Blond guy squints, holds out a hand to start ticking off points on his fingers. Licks his lips. 

“We already recorded the overnight carts. We got the four 18 second breaks on cart one, and the two 38 second ones on cart two. So. We need to load them and cue them up.”

Zach nods. “What else?”

“We already made sure the front door was locked. We recorded the end break on the overnight show. Ummm….”

“Yes, ok. All things that we _have_ done. What about the things we haven’t?”

The guy licks his lips again, and Zach can’t help but watch the tip of that tongue as it slides across his mouth. He drags his focus back by force of will. The guy’s pretty. Big deal. He’s gotta be trained, and the sooner it’s done, the sooner Zach can stop seeing the guy’s long-fingered hands in his sleep.

“Well, we need to check the tower lights, and sign out. We need to forward the phones. And…”

He’s clearly flailing, so Zach takes pity and turns back to the board. 

“And we need to make sure the right pots are up, so when the programs broadcast, they can be heard.”

“Right. Shit. Sorry.”

Zach feels a sudden pang of guilt at the disappointment in the kid’s voice. Ok. Maybe he’s been a _little_ hard on him.

“It’s ok. There’re a thousand little things to remember. You’ll get it.”

He turns again, just in time to see the guy smile, glee mixed with surprise spreading across his face.

“Yeah? You think so?”

Fuck. If only he’d waited to turn around, he would never have had to know what those lips look like stretched wide and grinning.

_Fuck._

“Yeah. You’ll be fine.” He turns back, shuffles the news print outs to keep his hands busy. “Hey, you know, why don’t you head on out? I’ll do the last break, and lock up. You go on home.”

“Are you sure?”

The guy almost sounds… disappointed? That can’t be right. Who gets disappointed about getting to go home early?

“Yeah, go ahead. Just don’t forget to clock out. And remember, 5:45 on Saturday. Yeah?”

He hears a shuffle from behind him. Dude’s still scuffing his feet. Well, he’ll learn that lesson soon enough.

“Yeah, ok. See you Saturday.”

There’s a pause, and Zach resolutely shuffles his papers again, reading the weather for the weekend _(sunny, clear, winds from the south-west at 15 mph)_ for the third time.

The door whispers shut, and Zach can breathe again, the space behind him sadly and blessedly empty.

Still, he knows. He’ll see those lips in his mind’s eye tonight, licking. He’ll tuck his hands under his arms, and lay, stiff, until he falls asleep.

\--

New guy is there in the morning, looking chilly and chipper in the gloom of the pre-dawn light as Zach pulls his car up and parks. It’s definitely cold, somewhere around forty degrees he’d guess, but at least it’s far enough into spring that there’s no snow to knock off the big satellite dish out back. 

“Morning, Zach!”

Zach just grunts, forcing himself not to stare at the goose-bumped strip of skin between the bottom of the guy’s shirt and the top hem of his sweatpants. It’s pale and glowing in the dim light, and Zach puts his hand to the keypad of the door to keep himself from just reaching out and touching.

The door swings open and they’re in, Zach clicking lights as he moves through the open-ceilinged back room, checking the whirring towers of equipment automatically as he tears off and logs the overnight report, signing into the logbook and dating it, clocking in as he climbs the stairs to the control room to take the station off overnight automation set-ups.

“What are you doing?”

Oh. Right. He’s supposed to be training. 

“Umm… crap.” He’s been doing this so long it’s just a series of motions to him, and he can’t bear the thought of having to force his sleepy brain to parse through the steps right at this moment. He waves a hand vaguely. “Come on. We have to do the first break. I’ll show you how to open up… later.”

The guy looks disappointed, but what’s he going to do, argue? He follows quietly up the stairs behind Zach, stands silently in the corner while Zach gives the station identification, the weather, and the underwriter, while desperately trying not to sound like he’s seconds from going back to sleep. He settles on the couch when Zach tells him to, and is still there when Zach wakes up just in time for the next break, his eyes watchful and his fingers still. 

\--

There’s something about this kid, and Zach just can’t shake it. It’s like… it’s like he doesn’t believe in personal space. Yes, the station is small. Yes, the rooms are tiny, and crammed with stack upon stack of various electronics, running the gamut from cutting edge to decades obsolete. But _still_ , Zach thinks when he turns around and whacks his elbow into Chris’ middle for the third time that evening, this is just not _right_.

He wouldn’t even really care, he thinks, placing the dat in the player and fast-forwarding, if it weren’t the way that every time he brushes against the other guy’s arm or stomach or back, he can feel the heat of him, the warmth radiating off that skin like a furnace. It raises the hair on his arms, makes him shiver surreptitiously in the dim fluorescent lighting.

It’s _distracting_.

It’s too much, somehow, and even though it’s been three weeks, and the novelty should be wearing off, he’s still verging on obsessed, watching as Chris moves, catching his breath every time Chris presses close to him, those eyes peering at him inscrutably. 

Zach has resigned himself to the continual presence of this crush. All he can do at this point is ride it out; these things pass, and so he will wait. 

At some point he will also stop masturbating to the sound of Chris’ voice giving station identifications. That might help, who knows?

\--

He’s a smart guy, Chris, but he hides it well. Zach isn’t sure why, but he does; keeps the poetry mostly hidden under a Sports Illustrated, uses _“hella”_ and _“fuckin’ a, man”_ in spite of his accidental dropping of “obsequious” and “amorphous” in early morning conversation. He catches on quickly, memorizing the functions of every knob, button, and geegaw on the board, learning the finer points of the recording programs and the FCC regulations in record time. 

He’s pretty, and intelligent, and well, Zach can overlook the asshole act. Everyone’s got something to hide, and everyone’s got their own reasons for it. Chris is fun, and helpful, and quite frankly, the easiest employee he’s ever had to train.

He finds himself stretching it out, finding ways to keep Chris coming in to share Zach’s shifts. He teaches him things he doesn’t need to know; how to splice the reel-to-reel tape, how to change the light bulbs on the tower lights. How to wire the console so that they can do off-site broadcast, and if that last one is just so that he can watch that little pink tip of Chris’ tongue get caught in the corner of his mouth, watch his long nimble fingers on the cables and plugs, well, you can hardly blame him. Chris sure doesn’t seem to mind.

And through it all, Chris is _right fucking there_. In Zach’s space, in his head, under his skin. Red plaid cotton shoved up against Zach’s shoulder, a moment of full-body press as they squish by each other in the hallways. A lean over the shoulder to peer at the screen that brings his breath to move over Zach’s mouth, one friendly back slap too many that inexplicably turns into the best shoulder rub Zach’s ever had, and leaving him sporting a hard-on that makes him sit at the desk and do busy work for 15 minutes before he can walk to the bathroom to jerk off before Chris finishes the overnight recordings.

He’s omnipresent, lurking in a way that would be seriously creepy if Zach weren’t so heavily in lust with him, touching in a way that Zach’s hormone-addled brain clutches at, even as his rational bits tell him he’s a fool.

\--

The final straw is when Zach spins his chair around from the soundboard to find himself literally face to face with Chris’ bulging crotch. This guy is either dumber than shit or way the fuck past subtle, and Zach frankly can’t be bothered to care anymore. 

“What. The _hell_.” Zach’s hands are on Chris’ hips, do not pass go, do not collect $200, do not slide your fingers under your trainee’s waistband, _oh_ , too late. “Do you think. You are doing?”

Chris’ knees are pressed wide against the sides of the chair, his mouth hanging open in something that looks an awful lot like a pleased smirk as he thrusts his hips forward toward Zach’s face. 

“Bout fucking _time_ you caught on, you idiot. I was starting to think you’d fried your brain by shocking yourself on the consoles one too many goddamn times.” He grins and thrusts his hips even closer, rolling Zach’s chair until it’s pressed against the counter, and Zach is pinned between the faux leather back and the pointedly tenting sweatpants in front of him. “You gonna do any thing about it? We both know you want to. C’mon Zach, it’s not going to suck it… _ohhhhh, fuck.”_

Zach smiles around a mouthful of Chris’ dick as he watches those eyes roll back in his head. Revenge is going to be sweet, oh yes. And given the noises coming from his underling at the moment, it, and he, are not going to be long in coming. Chris is already moaning as Zach applies his tongue with intent, Chris’ hands grasping at the equipment on either side of them to steady himself, thrusting harder into the hand Zach has curled at the base of his cock and gasping for air.

Zach uses his free hand to yank those ratty sweatpants down to Chris’ knees and reaches blindly for the bottle of Lubriderm the Development Assistant always keeps nearby to deal with the chronically dry skin that plagues the station, sucking Chris down till he wants to choke in order to distract him from the fingers sliding up from behind.

Beside him the reel to reel clicks on as Chris hits some switch or other, and Zach just has time to chuckle around his mouthful before Chris is coming down his throat, his body freezing and clutching above him, his hands grasping at Zach’s shoulders as he moans long and loud.

“ _Fuck_ , Zach, that was…”

He starts to slump, and Zach grabs him, leaping to his feet and kicking the chair toward the door as he spins Chris around to spread him out face down across the control panel, his limbs lax and compliant. It doesn’t take more than thirty seconds for Zach to drop his pants and apply the condom Chris is waving like a tiny flag to his achingly hard dick. It takes even less time to line up and slide in, the constricting heat like something miraculous around him, Chris’ open-mouthed whine beneath him making him the most grateful he’s ever been for the black foam soundproofing that lines the walls and ceiling around them. 

It’s over too fast, but that was inevitable. He’s been staring at this ass for weeks now, stroking himself to frustrated bliss every night to the thought of it. Now that he’s actually in it, watching his cock slide in and out as his heart pounds and Chris squirms, it was never going to last long. 

Chris is writhing like a champ, sliding dials and pressing buttons with various body parts in a ballet of uninhibited ecstasy, and Zach is so, _so_ thankful that they’re in sub-control, and thus run no risk of broadcasting through inadvertent switch-flipping. As it is, he’ll have to make sure they haven’t inadvertently recorded anything later. He grips Chris’ hips and angles up, stars bursting along his line of sight as he comes, his fingers digging into the skin in front of him in a desperate bid to not slide down to the floor. 

He falls forward instead, slumping across the back in front of him, laying his face on the plaid flannel across Chris’ shoulder blades.

They’re silent for a moment, the only sound their labored breathing and the tick of the clock. 

Fuck. _The clock_.

He looks, swears, and pulls out, yanking his pants back up with a grimace. He’s just got time to stop by the bathroom and dispose of the evidence before the next break. Chris makes a whining sound, and lets himself fall to the floor, rolling to lay flat on his back, arms wide and open, cock limp and bare. He’s sleepy, gorgeous, and beautifully obscene.

Zach pauses in the door to appreciate the view, the back of his brain ticking down the minutes (seconds) he has left. 

“Chris?”

Chris pries open an eye, licks his lips. “Yeah?”

Zach lets himself smile down, his teeth showing between his swollen lips.

“Don’t. Move.”


End file.
